Most head coaches don’t believe in moral victories, and at 8-10, the honeymoon phase for the Thunder can fairly be considered to be over. The team will enter play on November 25 having won less than half of its games, and there are some troublesome trends.

“I was very, very encouraged because I thought we gave incredible effort tonight,” the coach said after spending the first few minutes of his post game media address pointing out the things that he felt went right for the Thunder.

“I thought we came out in the first half and really played well coming off our last game. I know a lot of people talked about how these guys respond. And it’s a great group as it relates to them wanting to compete.”

According to the coach, the team had a few defenses lapses and lost the game at the three-point line. The Pistons were plus-18 from beyond the arc, connecting on 14 of their attempts, as opposed to just eight for the Thunder.

“I thought in the second half, to me the biggest difference was the three-point line,” Donovan said.

“I thought we had some really good looks. Coming down the stretch, in terms of the ball movement and the kind of shots we generated, was really positive. I thought our stamina on defense was much better through the 48 minutes.

“We did lose a couple three-point shooters; they did make some tough threes. I thought we had a lot of opportunities. I thought the last four minutes we had really good ball movement and really generated some good looks. The ball just didn’t go in the basket for us.”

That would be a valid observation. Clearly encouraging his team to push the pace recently, the Thunder played fast and generated plenty of looks—Russell Westbrook, Paul George and Carmelo Anthony combined to take 70 shots. Unfortunately, the trio only connected on 26 of them—just 37 percent.

Paul George seemed to see things the same was as his coach.

“I thought we had some good looks,” George said.

“There are shots that we obviously didn’t make, but that’s just how it is. It’s another game we had under control, had our hands on, and I thought their second unit came out and played great. They had some big plays down the stretch that they made and ultimately won the game.”

For the Thunder, the trend of losing big leads is troublesome. Moving forward, opposing teams will be made aware of the fact that the team gets tentative in the waning minutes of games and will always believe that they’ll have a shot at coming back on the team. That’ll make it tough to close resilient teams out, so things won’t get any easier from here on out.

At least publicly, the Thunder have managed to stick to a unified message, and the positive approach by Donovan is more than likely a reflection of what he is preaching to his players.

Whether you believe in moral victories or not, that’s all the Thunder have to show for quite a few of their efforts this season.

Unfortunately, those victories aren’t the type that’ll help the team qualify for the playoffs, so like Billy Donovan, at this point, the most anyone around the team can do is hope for better.

Another opportunity awaits on Saturday night in Dallas, when the Thunder will visit the worst team in the Western Conference.

For Donovan’s sake, hopefully he’ll have more to be proud of than the team’s effort.

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Moke Hamilton

Moke Hamilton is a writer and columnist for the USA TODAY Sports Media Group's NBA Wire. Based in New York City, Moke has covered the NBA for seven seasons, previously working for Turner Sports and NBC Universal. He can be heard from time to time on the airwaves of 98.7FM ESPN New York.